A group of former Canfor employees have happily traded their day jobs for that of Santa's not-so-little helpers.
This year, as they've been doing since 1994, the group of retirees is diligently working to create sack loads of handmade toys to donate to local and regional charities.
A group of about 15 men who meet every Tuesday morning between 9:30 a.m. and 1 p.m. for coffee and conversation are creating the wooden trucks, rocking and hobby horses, cars, airplanes, boats, cradles, piggy banks and more from materials primarily donated by the pulp and paper mill.
Other supplies and support are donated by General Paint, Rona, Brunette Industries and the Bear Lake Curling Club.
"It's a good group of retirees," said Skip Cleave, project co-ordinator. The group consists of former millwrights, mechanics, and operators who design the toys, draw up blueprints and pull them from wooden blocks with band and table saws, sanders and drill presses. Cleave said the wives of the club members also get involved by painting the
constructed toys.
The coffee club members, who are joined by about five others during the Christmas season at the Hart Pioneer Centre, began their work a couple of months ago and are getting ready to deliver the toys to their beneficiaries.
This year, they will be donated to various Prince George organizations like the St. Vincent de Paul Society and other hospitals and clinics. They will also be brought to organizations in Houston, Vanderhoof, Fort St. James, Quesnel and 100 Mile House.
Cleave said the group started the project because it gave them something to do, and has simply grown from there.
"Every year we make a little a little more," he said. In its early years, the group produced 50 toys. Today they're churning about 20 times that amount. And Cleave has no plans of slowing down, saying he and his friends will continue the Christmas tradition "until we get old."
